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Among the North American Indians a tribe is a body of persons who are
bound together by ties of consanguinity and affinity and by certain
esoteric ideas or concepts derived from their philosophy concerning the
genesis and preservation of the environing cosmos, and who by means of
these kinship ties are thus socially, politically, and religiously
organized through a variety of ritualistic, governmental, and other
institutions, and who dwell together occupying a definite territorial
area, and who speak a common language or dialect.
From a great variety
of circumstances-climatic, topographic, and alimental-the social,
political, and religious institutions of the tribes of North American
Indians differed in both kind and degree, and were not characterized by
a like complexity of structure; but they did agree in the one
fundamental principle that the organic units of the social fabric were
based on kinship and its interrelations, and not on territorial
districts or geographical areas.
In order to constitute a more or less permanent body
politic or tribe, a people must be in more or less continuous and close
contact, and possess a more or less common mental content-a definite sum
of knowledge, beliefs, and sentiments which largely supplies the motives
for their rites and for the establishment and development of their
institutions, and must also exhibit mental endowments and
characteristics, that are likewise felt to be common, whose functioning
results in unity of purpose, in patriotism, and in what is called common
sense.
The tribe formed a political and territorial unit which, as has
been indicated, was more or less permanently cohesive: its habitations
were fixed, its dwellings were relatively permanent, its territorial
boundaries were well established, and within this geographical district
the people of the tribe represented by their chiefs and headmen
assembled at stated times at a fixed place within their habitation and
constituted a court of law and justice. At the time the North American
Indians were first brought within the view of history, they were
segregated into organized bodies of persons, and wherever they assembled
they constituted a state, for they united the personal and the
geographical ideas in fact, if not in theory.
Various terms have been employed by discoverers,
travelers, and historians to designate this political and territorial
unity. French writers employed "canton," "tribu," and "nation"; English
writers used "tribe," "canton," and "kingdon,"; while others have used "pagus,"
"shire," and "gau," the territorial meaning of which is that of a
section or division of a country, whereas the concept to be expressed is
that of a country, an entire territorial unit. Because the word "tribe"
in its European denotation signifies a political unit only, its use
without a definition is also inaccurate. The jejune and colorless terms
"band" and "local group" are often employed as adequately descriptive of
an organized body of Indian people; but neither of these expressions in
the majority of cases should be used except when, from the lack of
definite ethnologic information regarding the institutions of the people
so designated, the employment of a more precise and descriptive term is
precluded.
The effective power of the tribe for offense and
defense was composed not only of the accumulated wealth of its members
and the muscular strength, stamina, and experience of its quota of
warriors, but also of the orenda (q. v.), or magic power, with which, it
was assumed, its people, their weapons and implements, and their arts
and institutions, were endowed.
Some tribes constituted independent states, while
others through confederation with other tribes became organic units of a
higher organization, retaining governmental control of purely local
affairs only. Sometimes alliances between tribes were made to meet a
passing emergency, but there was no attempt to coordinate structures of
the social fabric in such manner as to secure permanency. Nevertheless
in North America a number of complex, powerful, and well-planned
confederations were established on universal principles of good
government. Of this kind the League of the Five Tribes of the Iroquois
in the closing decades of the 16th century was especially typical. This
League was founded on the recognition and practice of six fundamentals:
(1) the establishment and maintenance of
public peace;
(2) the security and health or welfare of the body;
(3) the doing of justice or equity;
(4) the advocacy and defense of the doing of justice;
(5) the recognition of the authority of law, supported as it was by
the body of warriors; and
(6) the use and preservation of the orenda or magic power.
The sum of the activities of these six principles
in the public, foreign, and private life of these tribes so confederated
resulted in the establishment and preservation of what in their tongue
is called the Great Commonwealth.
In the history of the American Indian tribes,
differences in culture are as frequent as coincidences. Different
peoples have different ideas, different ideals, different methods of
doing things, different modes of life, and of course different
institutions in greatly different degrees and kinds. The course of the
history of a people is not predetermined, and it is divergent from
varying and variable conditions. Different results are consequent upon
different departures. In some places tribal organizations are
established on a clan or a gentile basis; in other regions a system of
village communities was developed; and in still others pueblos or
village communities were founded.
From these different modes of life,
influenced by varying environment and experiences, many new departures,
resulting in unlike issues, were made. For the reason that the
elementary group, the family, whence the other units are directly or mediately derived, is always preserved, coincidences are not infrequent.
The term "family" here is taken in its broad sociologic sense, which is
quite different from the modern use of it as equivalent to fireside (see
Family). In gentile and clan tribal organizations a family consists of
the union of two persons, each from a different gens or clan, as the
case might be, and their offspring, who therefore have certain rights
in, and owe certain obligations to, the two clans or gentes thus united
in marriage by the two parents.
In historical times, in the group of Iroquois peoples,
the tribes consisted of from 3 to 12 or 14 clans, irrespective of
population. For social, political, and religious purposes the clans of a
tribe were invariably organized into two tribal portions or organic
units, commonly denominated phratries, each of which units in council,
in games, in ceremonial assemblies, or in any tribal gathering occupied
around the actual or assumed fire a place opposite to that hold by the
other phratry. In the placing of these clan groups the cult of the
quarters is merely vestigial, having long ago lost its influence. In the
great tribal gambling games between the units of the tribe (for phratry
must at all times contend against phratry), the eastern side of the
"plot" was regarded as insuring success; but at the present day the
phratries alternate annually in occupying this auspicious quarter,
although the phratry occupying this side is not at all times successful.
This dualism in the organization of the social,
religious, and political units, next in importance to that of the tribe
itself, is seemingly based on a concept derived from the primitive
philosophy of the tribe regarding the procreation, reproduction, and
maintenance of life on earth. The clans of a phratry, or association of
clans, called one another "brothers," and the clans of the opposite
phratry "cousins" or "offspring." In the elder period the phratry, the
organic unit next to the tribe, was an incest group to the members of
it, and consequently marriage was prohibited within it, hence the
phratry was exogamous. But owing to the many displacements of the tribes
by the advance of Caucasians this regulation in regard to the phratry
has fallen into disuse, so that at the present time the clan alone is
the exogamous group, just as the gens is the only exogamous group in
those tribes in which gentile organizations prevail and gentile
brotherhoods were formerly in vogue.
There were, however, never any phratriarchs as such. The chiefs and other officers of the several clans
acted as the directors and rulers of the two phratries, whose acts, to
have tribal force and authority, must have had the approval of both
phratries acting conjointly through their recognized representatives.
Neither phratry could act for the tribe as a whole. The members of a
phratry owed certain duties and obligations to the members of the
opposite one; and these obligations were based not only on
considerations of consanguinity and affinity but also on esoteric
concepts as well. The reason for the last expression will be found to be
cosmical and will be emphasized later.
Selecting the Iroquois tribes as fairly typical of
those in which the clan organization had reached its highest
development, it is found that in such a tribe citizenship consisted in
being by birth or adoption (q. v.) a member of a clan, and membership by
birth in a clan was traced only through the mother and her female
ancestors; hence it was solely through the mother that the clan was
preserved and kept distinct from every other. But although the child
acquired his birth-rights only through his mother, singularly enough it
was through the father that his or her kinship was extended beyond his
own into that of his father's clan, which owed to the offspring of its
sons certain important obligations, which bound these two clans together
not only by marriage but by the stronger tie of a recognized kinship.
By
this process the clans of the tribe were bound together into a tribal
unity. By the organization of the clans of the tribe into two exogamic
groups, the possible number of clans between which the said mutual
rights, privileges, and duties of fatherhood might subsist were in most
cases reduced by about half; but this reduction was not the object of
this dualism in tribal structure. The wise men of the early Iroquois,
having endowed the bodies and elements of their environment and the
fictions of their brains with human attributes, regarded these bodies
and phenomena as anthropic beings, and so they imputed to theta even
social relations, such as kinship and affinity, and not the least of
these imputed endowments was that of sex-the principles of fatherhood
and motherhood. These beings were therefore apportioned in relative
numbers to the two sexes.
Even the Upper and the Lower and the Four
Quarters were regarded as anthropic beings. They, too, were male and
female; the Sky was male and a father; and the Earth was female and a
mother; the Sun, their elder brother, was male, and the Moon, their
grandmother, was female. And as this dual principle precedent to
procreation was apparently everywhere present, it was deemed the part of
wisdom, it would seem, to incorporate this dual principle by symbolism
into the tribal structure, which was of course devised to secure not
only welfare to its members living and those yet unborn, but also to
effect the perpetuation of the tribe by fostering the begetting of
offspring. If then a clan or a gens or a phratry of clans or gentes came
to represent symbolically a single sex, it would consequently be
regarded as unnatural or abnormal to permit marriage between members of
such a symbolic group, and so prohibition of such marriage would
naturally follow as a taboo, the breaking of which was sacrilegious.
This would in time develop into the inhibition of marriage commonly
called exogamy as a protest against unnatural and incestuous sex
relations. The union of man and woman in marriage for the perpetuation
of the race was but a combination in the concrete of the two great
reproductive principles pervading all nature, the male and the
female-the father and the mother. It would seem, then, that exogamy is
not an inhibition arising from any influence of the clan or gentile
tutelary, as some hold, but is rather the result of the expression or
the typifying of the male and the female principles in nature-the
dualism of the fatherhood and the motherhood of nature expressed in the
social fabric.
In pursuing the study of this dualism in organic tribal
structure it is important to note the appellations applied by the
Iroquois to these two esoteric divisions.
When the Five Tribes, or the Five Nations as they were
sometimes called, united in the formation of their famous League of the
Iroquois, this dualistic concept was carefully incorporated into the
structure of the organic federal law. The Mohawk, the Onondaga, and the
Seneca were organized into a phratry of three tribes, ceremonially
called the "Father's Brothers," while the Oneida and the Cayuga were
organized into a phratry of two tribes, ceremonially called "My
Offspring," or the phratry of the "Mother's Sisters." These esoteric
designations are echoed and reechoed in the long and interesting chants
of the Condolence Council, whose functions are constructive and
preservative of the unity of the League, and of course adversative to
the destructive activity of death in its in myriad forms.
It is equally important and interesting to note the
fact that the name for "father" in the tongues of the Iroquois is the
term which in the cognate Tuscarora dialect signifies 'male,' but not
'father,' without a characteristic dialectic change. It is thus shown
that fundamentally the concepts "father" and "male" are identical.
In the autumn at the Green Corn Dance, and in the
second month after the winter solstice at the extensive New Year
ceremonies, the chiefs and the elders in each phratry receive from tho e
of the other the enigmatic details of eams dreamed by fasting children,
to interpreted by them in order to ascertain the personal tutelary
(?totem, q. v.) of the dreamer. And in the earlier time, because the
procreation of life and the preservation of it must originate with the
paternal clan or association of clans, the members of such a clan should
in a reasonable time replace a person killed or captured by enemies in
the clan of their offspring.
The paternal clan and the phratry to which
it belonged was called, with reference to a third person, hoñdoñnis'hen',
i. e. 'his father's brothers (and kindred).' Since the clan, and
therefore the tribe of which it is a component part, is supported by the
numbers of those who compose it, whether men or women (for its power and
wealth lie chiefly in the numbers of its constituents), it followed that
the loss of a single person was a great one and one that it was
necessary to restore by replacing the lacking person by one or many
according to the esteem and the standing in which he was held. This
peculiar duty and obligation of the members of the paternal clans to
their offspring in the other clans is still typified among the modern
Tuscarora and other Iroquois tribes on the first day of the new year. On
this day it is customary to make calls of congratulation and for the
purpose of receiving a present, usually some article of food, such as
small cakes, doughnuts, apples, pieces of pie, etc.
But every person on
entering the house of a clansman of his or her father may demand, in
addition to the ordinary presents provided, "a baby," using for this
purpose the ordinary term for a baby, owi'ra'a`. To comply with these
apprehended demands, the thrifty housewife, to aid her good man in
fulfilling his obligations, usually has prepared in advance a goodly
number of small mummy-like figures of pastry, 8 or 10 inches in length,
to represent symbolically the "babies" demanded.
So it would seem that marriage, to be fruitful, must be
contracted between members of the male and the female parts of the
tribal unity. In primitive thought, kinship, expressed in terms of
agnatic and enatic kinship, of consanguinity and affinity, was the one
basis recognized in the structure of the social organization. At first
all social relations and political and religious affiliations were
founded on ties of blood kinship of varying degrees of closeness; but
later, where such actual blood kinship was wanting, it was assumed by
legal fictions (see Adoption). Within the family as well as outside of
it the individual was governed by obligations based primarily on kinship
of blood and on certain fundamental cosmical concepts consonant
therewith.
The Omaha tribe is constituted of ten gentes organized
into two divisions of five gentes each, and this dualism in the
organization of the tribal gentes into two constituent exogamous bodies
is apparently prevalent in all the tribes cognate with the Omaha, with
perhaps the exception of the Ponca. When on the great annual tribal
hunt, the Omaha tribe camped ceremonially in the form of an open or
broken circle. When the tribe performed its religious rites this circle
was always circumspectly oriented. But when the tribe was moving, the
opening of the camp-circle always faced the direction in which the tribe
was marching, although the opening was symbolically toward the east.
This symbolic fiction was accomplished by turning the circle in such
manner that if the actual opening faced the west the five tribal gentes
whose invariable place was on the north side of the circle when actually
oriented would still be found on the north side of the camp-circle and
the other live gentes on the south. But it seems that this order was not
always punctiliously observed at home. This persistent adjustment of the
order in which the gentes were-placed in regard to the real orient was a
reflex of the cult of the quarters and apparently rested on a concept
concerning the origin of life and of the bodies of the environing world.
Like the Iroquois, and perhaps all the other Indian peoples of North
America, the Omaha imputed life and human attributes and qualities to
the various bodies and elements in nature. So regarding them as
anthropomorphic beings, even social relations such as kinships and
affinities were attributed to them, and not the least among these
imputed properties was sex. Like all living things these bodies must
need be apportioned to the two sexes.
And as the various regions and
quarters were regarded as beings, they also were male or female by
nature. The Sky is male and a father, and the Earth is female and a
mother; the Above is masculine, and the Below is feminine; the Sun is
male, the Moon female. Since these two principles are necessary to the
propagation of the races of men and animals, they were also made factors
in the propagation and conservation of the necessaries of life. And as
this dualism appeared seemingly in all living things, it was deemed
needful to embody these two so necessary principles symbolically in the
organic units of the tribal organization; and so it would appear that
the one side as the representative of the Sky was made male and the
other as representing the Earth was made female.
Therefore it would seem
that marriage to be fruitful must be between the male and the female
parts of the tribal unity. Descent being traced solely through the
father, it was he who sustained the gens and kept it distinct from every
other. By birth the child derived his name, his place, his taboo, and
his share in the rites of his gens solely from his father; but, on the
other hand, it was through his mother's gens that his kinship was
projected beyond the gens of his birth. So it is clear that it is the
tie of maternal kinship the bond of affinity-that actually binds
together the gentes and that impresses every individual with the
cohesive sentiment that he is a member of an interrelated kinship body
of persons.
According to Miss Fletcher (Nat. Mus. Rep., 1897), from
whom the data characterizing the Omaha tribal organization has been
largely derived, the distinctive features of the Omaha gens and those of
its close cognates are, in general, that descent is traced only through
the father, that the chieftainship is apparently not hereditary, that
its members do not derive their lineage from a common ancestor, that it
possesses a set of personal names, that it practices a common rite, that
it is not named after any individual, and that it is exogamous.
So that
the Omaha tribe, having ten such gentes organized in two exogamous
associations, to each of which belongs a tribal pipe and a phratriarch
who is one of the governing council of seven chieftains, has, among
other things, ten religious rites, ten taboos, ten sets of personal
names, and a governing council of seven chieftains. Formerly marriage
was permitted only between members of the two exogamous associations,
but not between the members of either among themselves.
According to Boas there are remarkable differences in
the complex social organizations of the tribes of the northwest coast.
Of these the Haida and the Tlingit, both having maternal descent, are
each composed of two exogamous organic and organized halves or units,
which among the Tlingit are called the Raven and the Wolf, respectively,
while among the Haida they are known by the names Eagle and Raven. The
sociology of these two tribes, while approximating in general structure
that of the Tsimshian, having likewise a definite maternal organization,
is less complex, for among the latter there are apparently four
exogamous associations with subdivisions or sub-clans. Before any
satisfactory knowledge of the tribal structure and its functions can be
obtained, it is necessary to possess in addition to the foregoing
general statements a detailed arid systemized knowledge of the technique
by which these several organic units, singly and jointly, transact the
affairs of the tribe.
This kind of information is still in large measure
lacking for a great proportion of the North American Indian tribes.
Among the Kwakiutl, Boas found a peculiar social organization which
closer study may satisfactorily explain. Among the northern Kwakiutl
tribes there are a number of exogamic clans in which descent is traced
preferably in the maternal line, but in certain cases a child may be
counted as a member of his father's clan. Yet, Boas adds, "By a peculiar
arrangement, however, descent is so regulated that it proceeds in the
maternal line."
In speaking of the widely prevalent dualism in the
highest organic units of the tribal structure, especially with reference
to these tribes of the northwest, Boas remarks: "Since the two-fold
division of a whole tribe into exogamic groups is a phenomenon of very
wide occurrence, it is fruitless to speculate on its origin in this
special case, but it is worth while to point out that Dr Swanton in his
investigations among the Haida was led to the conclusion that possibly
the Eagle group may represent a foreign element in the tribe," and
states what but few others appear to see: that the crest system ("totemism")
on the Pacific coast is not necessarily connected with this peculiar
division of the tribe. But it has already been herein indicated in what
manner this dualism has been hade a feature in the social structure of
at least two linguistic stocks, and that the reasons there advanced may
be tentatively accepted as at least a probable explanation of such
divisions in other tribes having analogous social institutions, unless
it can be shown with greater reason to be due to some other equally
potent cause.
Among the Salish, the clan and the gentile forms of
social structure do not occur. In this respect the littoral Salish
differ materially from those of the interior. Among the latter,
according to Hill-Tout, the social fabric is so simple and loose that it
"borders closely upon anarchy," while among the former it is
comparatively complex, and the commune is divided into "a number of hard
and fast classes or castes," three in number, exclusive of the slave
class. Boas, writing in 1905 of the Salish tribes of the interior of
British Columbia, says that in the "very loose" social organization of
these people, if such it may be called, no tribal unit is recognized;
that there are no exogamic groups; and no hereditary nobility was found,
personal distinction being acquired chiefly by wealth and wisdom.
While
the exigencies of the food quest compelled these Indians to change their
habitations from season to season, their permanent villages were
situated in the river valleys. There are according to this author
frequent and considerable fluctuations in the population of the
villages, but it does not appear that these changes result in a
diminution of the tribal population. It appears that deer-fences and
fishing places were the property of certain persons and families, and
moreover that the hunting territory was regarded as the common property
of the whole tribe. From the prominence given to the "family" in
marriage observances, in burial customs, and in property rights, it is
possible that further Investigation will reveal a much more complex and
cohesive organization than is now known to exist.
According to Chamberlain the social structure of the
Kutenai is remarkably simple, being in strong contrast to the social
systems of great complexity found in British Columbia and on the N. W.
coast. There is no evidence that the Kutenai have or ever had clan or
gentile institutions or secret societies. Each tribal or local community
had a chief whose office was hereditary, although the people always had
the right to select some other member of the family when for any cause
it was needful so to do. The power and authority of the chief was
limited by the advice and action of the council. Formerly, a chief was
elected to direct the great hunting expeditions. The population of the
tribe was supported by the adoption of aliens by residence and by
marriage. Descent was probably traced through the mother, and marriage
of first cousins was strictly forbidden. These apparently tentative
statements of Chamberlain indicate that the tribe was held together by
the ties of consanguinity and affinity.
Handbook of American Indians, Frederick W. Hodge,1906
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